Shadows on the Green
by Ghilanna Faen Tlabbar
Summary: The University of Delaware, when no one's really looking. With apologies to the professors and students.
1. Professor William Harris

**Professor William Harris  
**_Economics_

His students wonder why he's strange.

He knows they do. It's a prominent shade in their eyes, the twin hue of confusion and laughter. It doesn't bother him. He's worked hard to ensure it's that way. In fact, it's exactly what he needs.

What stirs a shadow of concern in the back of his mind is the momentary flash of anger, just behind the pupil. Most students don't show this. He leaves them alone. But, once in a while, he'll make a joke at the expense of some frat boy in an oversize baseball cap snoozing in the front row. The young man's eyes connect with his and, just for a moment, turn a poisonous shade of green. Or he'll sing and, out of the corner of his eye, see a quiet, pretty girl tapping her foot along and making vaguely arcane motions with her fingers.

He especially watches out for the ones in the middle rows. The ones who take special care to avoid his attentions, who keep their head down at the appropriate times and who smile like snakes when he tells someone to change their major.

They always smile. They never laugh. That's the tip-off.

He's told the students before that the doors are shut at ten-ten every day so that they won't be disturbed by an unannounced entrance. That part's true. He just doesn't feel the need to tell them "Sorry kids, the intruders aren't students. They're beings from beyond the world that are after that quiet girl making strange sigils with her hands. This happens a lot in my line of work, don't worry."

No, he doesn't need to say it.

The ones who are smiling knew it anyway.


	2. Professor Evgeny Klauber

**Professor Evgeny Klauber  
**_International Relations_

There are others like him. He knows this. He's met them.

Where?

Nowhere.

How did he meet them nowhere?

The same way the dead speak with tongues of salt and fire, trees grow backwards and time is measured by shades of purple. Dreams are funny like that.

Evgeny.

The best of the crop. Small king of a small hill. How d'you do, do you like my shirt?

He loves prophets. The fact that simple human beings can tap that wellspring of knowledge fascinates him. They don't even have to scry. Imagine that! Humans, telling the future from books! Forget tarot cards, smoke and mirrors, dreams, "fairy stones" (their pixies always made him laugh), crystals and ley lines. There are humans who can pick just the right words from a pile of books and make them_ make sense_!

He tried that once. When the Hedge came up twice, he went to bed, shutting and bolting the door behind him.

Never a lock. Just a small, strong bar made of cold iron.

Maybe trying to prophesy with gardening books wasn't the best idea.

Words have their own magic. He should have known that, really.

He keeps two lists in his class. The students don't know it, but the sheet that's always on his desk isn't attendance. Why keep track of fifty students when you can list the ten whose faces just might carry the same invisible sigil that's branded into his forehead?

Can't tell them that. Musn't tell them that. Someone could find it. Use it.

But they like his yellow shirt.

Maybe if they like the shirt enough, they won't find it.

Musn't let them.

There are eyes everywhere.


	3. Jacqueline

**Jacqueline  
**_Freshman_

I'm not dissociative.

No, really, I'm not. I don't black out, I know the people who know me and I've never felt that two people are sharing one diminutive body. Hell, I'm lucky that I manage to fit. But no, I'm not dissociative . I just like to organize things. Clothes, words, complex emotional tangles. I've always been a fan of the way Freud made sense of such things. I love Freud, incestuous drug addict though he may have been. It was the Oedipus complex that fucked him over, really. Poor boy.

Sorry, where was I?

Oh, right, sorry. Talking about organization. Irony, whoo.

Freud's psychic apparatus is one of my favorite theories. I love the idea that people have three basic entities within themselves. Id, ego and super-ego. Chaos, neutrality and law. Neat, huh?

Well, me being me, I had to go and personify all three. Iz'tel, my id, the little goblin rogue with jealousy issues and a whore mother. Jacqueline, my ego, the college student you see before you. And Moonshae, my super-ego.

Moonshae's weird.

If the parts of the apparatus were different people-which they're not, mind-Jacqueline would be Iz'tel's harried older sister. That's easy enough. But Moonshae...I don't know about her. Moonshae and her blue eyes and her wings of ice and sword of moonlight silver. She's cold but she's fair.

_No mercy, only justice._

It's funny, really, that Iz'tel seems to have more self-control than Moonshae. Maybe Jacqueline keeps her more in check, I don't know. Maybe it's just because I can't find her. I know where Iz'tel is at all times. I've only ever felt Moonshae's presence-resurgence?-when I'm angry.

_People need to be punished. Errant children deserve a whipping._

The angel of absolute law. Unfeeling and uncontrollable. And very, very angry.

I don't think her goal is to destroy all opposition. Moonshae is me and I'm too confrontational to wish that no one opposed me. But if that's not what she wants-what I want-then I'm not clear on what her purpose is. It's sure as hell not to balance out Iz'tel; Moonshae can easily cow both her and Jacqueline.

I've seen her do it before. She's relentless, flaying the soul until nothing but a crushing despair remains and only time or the gentlest of ministrations can soothe the ache.

Hell, I've been the target of it before. But that's...well...that's really not important. Suffice to say that it was a tangle of bad decisions, jealousies and boys. Moonshae was pissed.

_You faithless little bitch. Take what you deserve._

Pelo knows about her. He's been her target too. I set up an opportunity for him and his love to have a moment. He didn't take it. I'm surprised she didn't tear his head off. Maybe it's not her-my-style.

_Those who cheat me, I repay. In full. Sleep well, my brother._

I think that was the only time he's ever referred to me as a bitch.

Maybe her job is to give me an imaginary-_imaginary?_-figure to use as a scapegoat for the more vicious outbursts I have.

I don't know. She never bothered to tell me.

_Because you never asked._


End file.
